Pity the jurors in the Sharpe James federal corruption trial, for this was probably yesterday's most gripping moment.

Or, maybe, it was when a mild debate broke out over the difference in meaning between "occasionally" and "frequently"- as in whether Rose Marie Posella, the secretary to the former Newark mayor saw his co-defendant and alleged lover Tamika Riley occasionally or frequently at City Hall.

At that instant, one of the 17 jurors and alternates stared up at the courtroom ceiling, perhaps praying for rescue. Or maybe just stretching a stiff neck.

This is a trial, after all, that seeks to answer a relatively simple question that has, it turns out, no simple answer. The question is: Did James, while mayor, fraudulently trade city property, not for money, but for sex?

You'd think such a poser would provide an entertaining - if not titillating - spectacle. But the lawyer for Riley already conceded an affair existed and federal prosecutors admitted they don't have revealing videotapes or photos.

So the question gets changed to one of procedure and how badly, if at all, it was abused: The administrative procedures for selling city-owned abandoned property to people who want to redevelop it. No one has yet figured out how to make an X-rated movie out of a real estate closing.

Worse. Now that the openings are over, the lawyers can't provide narrative. The best thing they can do is provide tiny bits of information - drawn from scores of boxes of evidence literally covering the blue carpeted floor of the courtroom - and feed those to the jury.

For example, yesterday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Judith Germano took Posella virtually page by page through scores of thick documents all from just one hefty file marked exhibit 3800. The secretary had to say whether she recognized each document, explain what it was, identify the handwriting on it and read generous portions.

They were mostly memoranda - inexplicably and unnecessarily marked "Personal and Confidential" - that described either the mayor's happiness or unhappiness with the pace of development of the South Ward. None had anything to do with Tamika Riley.

More than two hours after she began, Germano finished, but not before showing a video of a cranky James telling a television reporter he had nothing to do with land sales and saying, "The mayor cannot give land to anyone."

Leaving everyone, most importantly jurors, to guess the meaning behind all the time and effort. Maybe it had something to do with proving a politician lied to a TV reporter, which is not a crime nor unexpected nor, in some circles, even frowned upon.

Then it happened again, only this time Riley's lawyer, Gerald Krovatin, picked up the same thick file and asked Posella to identify some of the same and some different documents she had identified for Germano. Again, no explanation.

It was during this process that Krovatin asked Posella about Miles Berger, the owner of the Robert Treat, and she answered the way she did and everyone laughed because it was the closest thing to amusing to happen in three days of trial so far.

Krovatin, one can guess, was trying to show lists of names of important people who are the city's movers and shakers and, wouldn't you know, Tamika Riley is not on the lists, proving she and the mayor were not close at certain crucial periods of time - although, just the other day, the same lawyer described his client as an "impact player" in Newark.

And this is a trial expected to last three months.

At the end of those three months, the jurors will somehow have to remember what happened yesterday and today - and for days like this for weeks to come. They will have to keep dates straight - because timing is very important in this case if a sex for land swap is to be proved. They will become unwilling experts on some aspects of New Jersey urban land use law.They will have to figure out which parcels of land, among hundreds, went to whom and why and what became of them. They will have to somehow divine the motives of people who will not likely testify. And they can't even take notes or talk to each other about it until it's over, maybe some time in May.

Maybe they didn't realize what Judge William Martini meant when he told them on the first day of trial, "This is a real sacrifice."